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Inexpensive tablet could open world to millions of Indians while creating hundreds of jobs in India and Canada

Jayesh Ranjan, the Telangana state government secretary for information technology, electronics, and communications, left, with Canada's Suneet Singh Tuli, president and CEO of Datawind, in Hyderabad, India on Thursday. The Mississauga company is opening a factory in Hyderabad that will create 500 jobs in India and 50 research and development jobs in the GTA. (Robert Benzie/Toronto Star)

A Mississauga tablet-computer manufacturer is opening a factory in Hyderabad that could open the world to hundreds of millions of Indians while creating jobs in India and Canada.

DataWind, which already has facilities in Amritsar making Android tablets and smartphones that are developed in Ontario and sell for as little as $50 in India, announced a new factory is being built in this southern Indian metropolis.

Suneet Singh Tuli, president and CEO of DataWind, said the move means 500 manufacturing jobs in Hyderabad and 50 high-tech research and development jobs in Mississauga.

Tuli said Premier Kathleen Wynne’s trade mission to India was critical to his company expanding in India — and being able to double its workforce in Ontario.

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“We’re excited. The premier’s visit acted as impetus to help expedite the process,” he said Thursday, noting he expects additional jobs to be generated in Mississauga as the company grows overseas.

Wynne said her trade push in fast-growing India “presents an invaluable opportunity to learn from one another.”

“It’s great to have DataWind here who will be opening a new manufacturing base in Hyderabad,” the premier told about 200 local officials looking for business partners in Ontario.

Jayesh Ranjan, the Telangana state government secretary for information technology, electronics, and communications, said Wynne’s trade mission was “absolutely” helpful to his state partnering with the Canadian firm.

“We got connected to them through them in a way,” Ranjan said of Queen’s Park.

“What really excites me is that DataWind is a very, very pioneering company. It has introduced low-cost tablets, low-cost smartphones,” he said.

“The fact that this kind of revolutionary . . . product is now going to be manufactured in Hyderabad gives us immense pride.”

Ranjan said the state of Telangana “rolled out the red carpet” for the Canadian firm.

“We are designing a special package of incentives and benefits for them because this is a very marquee name for us. The government won’t invest directly, but we will give them lots of incentives and subsidies so that eventually it becomes very competitive.”

DataWind’s tablets, netbook computers, and smartphones are equipped to give free access to the internet — a significant benefit in a developing country where only 300 million of almost 1.3 billion can get on the web.

“Eventually we intend to distribute (the tablets) on a large scale to our schoolchildren and make all the classrooms digital classrooms,” said Ranjan.

“So if the manufacturing is happening right here definitely we’ll be very happy to procure them off the shelf,” he said.

Telangana Information Technology, Electronics, and Communications Minister K.T. Rama Rao said the initiative will “not only contribute to the economic development of the state, but also helps in skilling the youth and creating enormous job opportunities in the region.”

Nadir Patel, Canada’s high commissioner to India, said the project is “part of the overall global supply chain of opportunity for Ontario and Canadian companies.”

“It’s great . . . to have an Ontario company engaged here very actively — and for the benefit back home as well,” Patel said in an interview.

“DataWind is a really good example of a successful private-sector company also contributing to social development and with a huge focus on education through their tablets and their ecosystem of products,” he said.

The new factory will produce 2 million tablets a year, which DataWind’s Tuli stressed “is just a drop in the bucket” of what’s needed to get India connected to the internet.

Earlier this week, he took Wynne and her delegation on a tour of his factory in Amritsar, where 700 workers make 5,000 computers a day. The company is India’s only touch-screen manufacturer.

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